Since 1990, the absolute poverty rate (now defined as the number of people in the world living on $1.25 or less) has been cut in half. This astonishing feat has been achieved thanks to major liberalization in places like India and China.
Perhaps more significantly, the global economy now has an exploding group of countries contributing to poverty relief. Emerging market countries contribute 100 times the funds to global development that they contributed in 2000, meaning that a second channel of funding for development now exists.
Such gains mean real increases in length and quality of life for billions of people around the world, something we can all be thankful for.
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